Mary Marguerite Zwicker (1904-1993) Canadian, Watercolor and Gouache on Board.  Depicts a boathouse on stilts with boats in front and a beautiful Canadian seaside community behind them. Signed lower right. Prior gallery stamp on back. 

Overall: 11 x 21 in.

Sight: 5 x 15 1/4 in.

#7372 . 

Mary Marguerite Zwicker (née Porter) was born in 1904 in Pleasant Valley, Yarmouth, on the southernmost tip of Nova Scotia, Canada. She studied painting at the Nova Scotia College of Art, and also traveled to the United States to study privately with German-American abstract expressionist painter Hans Hofmann. In 1928 Porter had one of her etchings accepted by the Society of Canadian Painters, Etchers and Engravers, making her the youngest female artist to do so at that time. That same year, she began teaching classes at the College, before moving on to teach at Acadia University in Wolfville. In 1937, she married a fellow art student named Leroy Zwicker, and began leading “painting and cultural tours” particularly in Spain, Italy and Portugal. She became internationally famous for her watercolor paintings of Nova Scotia landscapes and villages, and exhibited her work at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Montreal Art Association. Zwicker typically painted three watercolors each week her entire adult life, and only a handful of Nova Scotian artists were able to support themselves on painting alone, Zwicker being one. Zwicker believed in the idea of “art for the sake of art,” and imparted this to her many students. Zwicker was a member of the Nova Scotia Society of Artists, and in 1957 Zwicker and her husband became owners of Zwicker’s Gallery, the longest-running art store and commercial gallery in Halifax. The Zwickers continued to operate the gallery, which had first been opened in 1886 by one of Leroy’s ancestors, until 1968, after which it passed into new ownership. In 1959 Zwicker published a book entitled “On My Own,” a series of reflections on her European travels. In the 1960s she began to spend time in Cape Cod and Florida, taking summer classes at private painting schools. Her work is credited as an example of the watercolor medium at its most developed point, and had a profound impact on the maritime painting genre in Canada and the United States. Both Zwicker and her husband were patrons of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and during the 1980s they made a $4 million donation to them to preserve the house of Canadian folk artist Maude Lewis. In 1991, Zwicker held the last solo exhibit of her work at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, before she passed away in 1993.